TV Writing for Feature Screenwriters

ABOUT THE WEBINAR

Today, if you are looking for professional writing jobs, you should be looking to television. You already are a strong screenwriter, so now is the time to take your skill set to where the action is happening. The best writing and the most writing jobs are found in television. But the transition from film to TV can be daunting, the learning curve deep. How do your feature writing skills translate to episodic television? What are the most important things to focus on so you can make the transition in the fastest, easiest way? Which of your feature specs can best adapt to TV?

Every aspiring professional screenwriter today must be well-versed in television format and structure, not just features. There are some similarities between features and pilots but there are key differences that must be understood before they are implemented. This OnDemand webinar will not only help you to apply your feature writing skills to the form and format of television, but it will also show you how to adapt one of your feature screenplays into a TV pilot.

After you learn the key characteristics that must be present in a concept to work on television, both in the half hour and one hour forms, your instructor Daniel Calvisi will review the structural secrets of the television pilot that have made his webinars and books so popular.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:

• How to identify concepts that are fit for a TV series.
• How to adapt a feature into a TV pilot.
• The basic format and structure of the TV pilot, half hour and one hour.
• Which TV series have successfully adapted movies and how they did it.
• A checklist of the key questions to ask yourself before adapting a feature into TV.
• The importance of story engines, “act outs” and teasers.

WHO SHOULD LISTEN?

• Writers who have written feature screenplays but want to learn how to write a TV pilot.
• Writers who want to adapt one of their features into a pilot but don’t know where to start.
• Writers who want a crash course in TV writing that saves them time and money.
• Writers who want to learn the proper format and structure of a TV pilot.

Daniel P. Calvisi is a story analyst, speaker, screenwriter and the author of Story Maps: How to Write a GREAT Screenplay, Story Maps: TV Drama: The Structure of the One-Hour Television Pilot, Story Maps: 12 Great Screenplays and Story Maps: The Films of Christopher Nolan. He is a former Story Analyst for major studios like Twentieth Century Fox, Miramax Films and New Line Cinema. He coaches writers, teaches webinars on writing for film and television and speaks at writing conferences. He holds a degree in Film and Television from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. He lives in Los Angeles.

The Writers Store does not offer any refunds for the webinar. All sales are final.